Made of Death and Stars

EMERALD

✵ ✵ ✵

["Don't go, it'ssssss dangerousssss, witchling!"] Jade and Peridot told her at the same time, and her eyes went directly to where they were curled up in her bed, their heads up, tongues hissing, black eyes shimmering as well as the end of their emerald-scales tails.

She halted, staring at them, her anxiety growing inside her chest, "How'd it be dangerous? It's just me, Saoirse, and her mom Dior."

["Don't go, witchling!"] They insisted but didn't give her any kind of explanations, they never did, which always frustrated Emerald, because she never understood what they meant, why they were always saying weird stuff, or why they didn't like her best friend Saoirse.

"You should stop with this insistent disliking on her," she growled, "she's my best friend, the only actual normal friend I've ever had. I mean, witch is my normal, so she's on it. Everyone else either acted like I didn't exist or tried to kill me, she didn't, and she's been helping me, actively, to stay grounded. So, if you want me to break my promise to my best friend to meet her mom at final, you better give me a bloody good reason."

But her familiar twin serpents didn't, ["It'ssssss dangerousssss, witchling. That'sssssss all you need to know. Lissssssten to ussssss."]

"Why?" She countered, voice rising, stress taking over. "Why do you always do this to me? Why? Why do you always try to stop me from being with my best friend? Hell under me, she's the only fucking person who ever saw me for who I am and accepted me, and you want to fuck me over? I have nobody else," she yelled. "I don't want to die alone. I've long lost hope of ever having romance in my life, but let me have friendship at least. I don't want to be stuck with the two of you forever. You are a couple, mates, and I'm bitter because even you have someone and I don't."

Breathing heavily, Emerald grabbed the newest grimoire she made for herself using the shed scales of her familiars, shaking with anger. She's never been one to be good at controlling her emotions well, even less her outbursts, and that has always been deadly for her. Or better, for the people around her, memories that haunt her to her core, guilt creeping in.

["Witchling, you have usssssss. You are different from them. It will be hard to blend in when you refussssssse to go to Alexandrini!"] Jade hissed annoyed.

["You are not accepted in here, witchling!"] Peridot added.

"I am not going to that hellish academy," she hissed, feeling tears burn in her eyes. "You know why. You know why I can't be there. I won't find a coven even if I go there, which I will not fucking do. He won't let me go if I step foot in that hell. If he get his hands on me, I'm dead, I'm dead," swallowing she tightened her grip on her grimoire, "he will find a way to kill me, because he blames me for her death. And I blame myself too, but I cannot fucking die. I don't want to hear you telling me how fucking alone I am in this world, yeah? I know. You don't need to remind me."

["Not alone, you have ussssss, witchling. And they will never be able to harm you in Alexandrini, if you are a sssssstudent. We'll-"]

"I don't want your protection, Jade," she snapped, "I'm no kid. And he will find a way to kill me if I'm there. I can't, why can't you understand?"

["If you refussssssse to get training, more will die becausssse of your lack of control over your emotionsssss and powersssss, witchling. They are probably looking for you. Not to kill you, to train you, and,"]

"Peridot," she cried exasperated, "stop. You never met him, you did not see what… what happened. He tried to kill me back then and I had to run from him ever since. I'm running for my life since I was 7 years old. If he tried then, you think he won't try now? That I'm even more of a ticking fucking bomb because I didn't have training? Stop, please. Please. Leave me alone, Saoirse is teaching me the basics, she is helping me deal with my emotions slowly, and she said her mom is a legendary green witch, she's honest, and she… she likes me. I don't want to disappoint her."

["Ssssssshe issssss not a friend to you, witchling!"] Jade hissed.

"Because she's not a hybrid dark fucking witch like me?" Emerald yelled, temper rising again. "Enough, I've had enough of your prejudice. I know you hate green, golden, blue, and all witches but me, because I'm a broken doll, and you like broken things. I've heard that already. But you know what? My kind has been extinct for fucking ages, and I'm despise by everyone, because they were evil. Green witches are good, they take their power from nature, and I want to learn that, I want to be good."

When her cottage shook with the sheer power within her core, she swallowed hard, hating herself, hating her powers, hating her nature, hating her parents for having her, hating her ancestors for fucking the world, hating the two familiars she can't get rid off.

"Just… leave it. If you like loneliness that much, you can stay here, I am leaving. I made a promise to Saoirse and I intend on keeping it."

["Don't go, witchling!"] They tried again, only making her angrier.

["Green witchessssss don't like your kin, witchling!"] Jade added.

"No one likes my kin!" She screamed, done. "I hate it too. They are right to hate it, because both my two supposed-to-be-extinct kins, were evil incarnate, tyrants over the witches, having catastrophic power, and with a stupid superiority complex because they had an aptitude for all magic, and that was their fucking demise. They were greedy, wanted to swallow every single thing, and destroyed everything around them and themselves in the dumb process. I know the history, fuck. I don't want to hear it anymore!"

Putting her other five grimoires on her shoulder bag, she grabbed her iPod, put on the ear buds, and going with My Bad by The Chainsmokers to play. Thanking Nyx for how she couldn't hear her familiar serpents hissing anymore. It had been a friendship present from Saoirse to her on her 19th birthday, in the past Pink Moon back in April 16th.

Her friend gave it to her after she complained about how noisy her familiars were, how they were always trying to contradict and stop her from doing things, such as being with Saoirse. She put 111 songs she loved in the iPod for Emerald, which she's been listening to ever since, with love in her heart, for the first present someone ever gave her since the tragedy of her childhood.

Closing the doors of her cottage, she covered her ear pods with her long straight black hair parted in the middle, pressing her lips together as she locked the doors, hurt by how her familiars always act, about how blunt they are about her not belonging.

Don't cry, don't cry, don't cry, Emerald, don't cry. She told herself as she strode out of the heart of the woods of where she lives in Australia, the city she managed to arrive at three years ago, when she ran from Turkey where she lived for 2 years and a half in hiding, before she lost control of her magic in a anger outburst and the Soul Eater wardens of Alexandrini got a hold of her location. She's been running away around the world for years.

Jade and Peridot bonded to her when she was 8 years, after she fully awakened all of her magic in a anger outburst back when she was hiding in Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil, running away to the Caribbean from then. She always had to run once she had an outburst, which she had no control over, because those explosions of magic made it easy for them to track her. And wherever she went, always hiding within the veil that separates the unseelie humans from the witches and wizards and the magic, going by fake identity to fake identity, taking shelters where she can, educating herself by stealing books here and there.

Always on guard, always anxiously on alert, always mistreated by everyone, looked down upon, humiliated, and scrutinized. Both by normal humans who were racist with her Indian maternal heritage, or with her lack of education, manners, and later with her always having two serpents with her, and by the magical society, who treated her worse than a beggar. Until the day she lost consciousness in the edges of the forest she now lives in, in Australia, and got aided by Saoirse, who was staying alone in her home as her mom works out of the city, when she was at home for winter vacation.

Saoirse took care of her feverous body, give her food and water for her hunger and thirst, and helped her building her cottage in the forest. She wasn't scared of Jade and Peridot, and she allowed Emerald to borrow her books about history, geography, math, and other normal school subjects, as well as about linguistics. And when she realized Emerald wasn't a normal witch, she didn't throw her or mistreat her, she began to help her with what she could.

Even when Emerald tried push her away in the beginning, scared of getting hurt, letting her trust issues take the best of her, Saoirse didn't run or leave, she stayed and passed through Emerald's walls. And now she was going to help her meet her mom, and even ask her mom is she could teach things about magic to Emerald, so she could have some necessary control.

"They are wrong," she told herself, "she is my friend," she gulped, fighting the tears as What Was I Made For by Billie Eilish played on. "I trust her, she took care of me, she's trustworthy. She's my friend. Friend."

Emerald walked for three miles until she reached Saoirse family's beach villa, the Sturyeon Moon high on the sky, as she was travels at night, feeling better under the light of the stars, far too friendly with the monsters in the dark, knowing that the true monsters walked in daylight and acted as if they were honorable human beings, when they are far from that. She's had countless experiences with those type of monster to know that they are the ones she should fear, they are the ones who have been hunting her, only to kill or sacrifice her, just because they fear what she could become.

They fear what the history books told them to fear. They fear past mistakes and history from repeating themselves, and that fear is projected on her, used to hurt with it. They blame her for being what she is, when she wasn't to blame for that.

"Saoirse doesn't fear me," she reassured herself, inhaling deeply. Nodding to nothing, she walked towards the entry of Saoirse's home, but before she could knock, it opened widely and anxiety crept inside her as she meet the white-skinned freckled redhead woman with the bluest eyes in the world, looking like an oldest version of Saoirse, with expression lines on the corners of her eyes and marks that suggest she's used to smiling a lot.

She wasn't smiling now, she was analyzing Emerald from head to toe, and when she realized that, Emerald preyed she wouldn't be racist like so many others were just because of the brown shade of her skin, or question the reason why she has jewel-like emerald eyes, which is where her name comes from, her eyes.